


XX - Judgement

by theorangewitch



Series: Angstober [24]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Angst, Dying Parent (again), Gen, Revenge, brief depictions of self harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-08-01 18:02:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16289252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theorangewitch/pseuds/theorangewitch
Summary: Talya Basevi - First daughter and sister, then refugee, then cleric, and finally, killer.





	1. Rattle Cage After Cage

**Author's Note:**

> Day 13 - Revenge! Talya is Zipporah Basevi’s sister. Zipporah appears in the Day 7 - Forgotten prompt. Talya will return tomorrow for Day 14 - Hear Our Prayer, and she and Zipporah will both appear on Day 26 - Separated by War. 
> 
> As usual, the link to the full prompt list appears in the author’s note of the first work in this series.

The soldier, named Mylon, was tied to a tree. He wasn’t really a soldier anymore, he was retired, retired and caring for his elderly mother on their tiny homestead on the edge of the woods. Talya squatted down next to him, her glaive resting on the ground at her side.

Mylon’s eyes flicked downward to the amulet around her neck. “You’re a cleric. Of Kord. Is this divine wrath?”

Talya shook her head. “I owe a lot to Kord. But no. This wrath is my own.” She slowly unwound the blue fabric that wrapped around her arms and showed the skin under them to Mylon. Her upper arm was dotted with hash marks, little parallel scars about an inch long each, pale tallies carved into her midnight blue skin. There were eleven in total.

“Do you know what these mean, Mylon?” she asked.

“N-no,” he replied.

“They’re kills,” she told him. “There are thirty-six of you in total, so I’m not quite halfway there, but eleven is still pretty impressive, huh?”

“Thirty-six of _who_?” he cried. The anguish and fear on his face made a cruel delight well up inside her.

“Soldiers.”

“I’m not a—“

“But you _were_ ,” Talya said. “Just under fifteen years ago you and thirty-five others raided a small lumber village with an unusually high tiefling population in the middle of a forest not unlike this one full of houses not unlike the one you live in and families not unlike yours. Thirteen years ago you and the other soldiers destroyed that village, murdered my father and drove me, my mother, and my sister from our home. I watched as one of your compatriots pinned my father to the side of my house at spearpoint as his wife and children looked on, and then murdered him in cold blood for having the audacity to live there.”

“I, I—“

“You remember, don’t you?” Talya said. “You thought you’d forgotten, you tried to make yourself forget, but you don’t forget anymore. You _can’t._ But here’s the thing, I never had the luxury of forgetting. That night has been etched into my brain since I was eleven years old.”

Mylon’s whole body was trembling. “Are you going to kill me?” he asked.

“That depends on you,” Talya told him. “I have three questions for you. I like to learn the names of the people I kill. I’ve learned yours, Mylon. So I’m going to ask you for three names. If you get them right, I’ll let you live. If you get them wrong, I’ll kill you. Does that seem fair?”

Mylon didn’t reply. He started to sniffle.

“Good. I thought it was fair too.” She placed her hand against the bark of the tree next to his head and her palm lit up with a soft white light, _zone of truth_ radiating out from it. She instantly felt Mylon’s weak will crack under the spell while hers held strong. “The first name I need is the name of the man with one eye. He was a member of your squadron. Tall. Beefy. Black hair. Only one eye.” When Judgement had last seen the man with one eye, he hadn’t been wearing any kind of eyepatch over it. It had just been a black hole in his head, boring into her father’s skull before he’d slit his throat.

“Antony! Veran Antony!” Mylon cried. “He was our captain. I don’t know where he is, but his name was Veran Antony.”

Talya smiled. “You’re being much more cooperative than the other eleven, Mylon. I have half a mind to let you go.”

“Please,” he begged.

“But not until you answer two more questions. Next: what was the name of my village?”

“Your—“

“You raided it!” Talya hissed, baring her teeth. “You kidnapped its children and murdered their parents! You burned its houses to the ground, and displaced all of the survivors! You should at the very least know its name, Mylon.”

Mylon thought for a long moment, mouthing words Talya didn’t know, undoubtedly running through the names of the other villages he’d taken part in pillaging and burning that year. “Kelev!” he finally settled on. “It was the village of Kelev and the people there were so much more colorful than in the other villages we’d been to. It seemed almost a shame—and I saw Veran pin a man with blue skin and horns like yours to the side of a house, and he—I’m sorry.”

“Hm, they all are, when they’re looking at me like this. Final question: what was my father’s name?”

Panic flooded into Mylon’s eyes and Talya knew instantly that he didn’t know the answer. None of them did, none of them _could_. It wasn’t a fair question but it got the point across well and good.

“F-Frederik,” he stammered. “Omar. Janil. Beratu. Juda. _I DON’T KNOW!_ ” he cried, his voice echoing through the trees.

“One more guess,” Talya informed him.

“THOMAS!” he shouted.

“Close, but no cigar.” She put her jagged knife under his chin, the point just breaking the skin. “I have one more question. If you get it right I’ll let you go. What is _my_ name?”

“I don’t know,” he whimpered.

Talya smiled. “It’s Judgement.” And then she jabbed her knife between his jaw and through the roof of his mouth. He let out a piercing scream which was quickly cut off by a sickening gurgling before she slashed his throat, putting a permanent end to every sound he would ever make.

After this, she wiped off his blood on her pants and then carved a twelfth tally into her bicep. It was a deep, painful cut, but she relished in the pain. The red of her blood contrasted against her blue skin. For every mark she made she grew a little closer to justice.

It took her a little over an hour to prepare his body for cremation. She took wood from the shed outside his home and stacked him on it. She’d done this many times since she’d left the service of her lord in the south, renamed herself “Judgement”, and devoted herself to the cause of vengeance for her father and her village. She always did the same thing after burning the body. She took Mylon’s knife and used it to pin a note to his mother’s door.

“Your son has paid for his crimes,” it read. “He will not be coming home.”


	2. Be the Lightning in Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She burst through the empty doorframe, relieved to see her mother still lying there, tucked under the overcoat that had once belonged to Tammuz Basevi, her chest still rising and falling, albeit faintly. 
> 
> “Mama!” she cried, running to her mother’s side. 
> 
> Mira’s eyes fluttered open, then widened in horror as she took in her daughter’s visage. “Talya, what happened?” she asked, her voice a hoarse whisper. 
> 
> “Mama, I’m so sorry,” Talya said. She was trying her best not to cry. “We have to leave. I’ve done something terrible.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 14 - Hear Our Prayer! The Prayer bit doesn't come in until the very end tho. Mostly it's just a sad story about a sad girl and her mom.

Before she was Judgement, Talya Basevi was Talya. She was a girl of fifteen who worked in a small town as a baker’s assistant. It was her third job in as many months, but it was the first where her boss treated her well. Her boss was a woman named Isolde Branwell, a ruddy-cheeked, gap-toothed, jolly woman with a loving smile and a generous heart. Talya worked for her and her husband in the kitchen, powdering her blue hands in white flour and rubbing calluses into her palms as she kneaded. Isolde’s husband, Jan, was as good-natured as his wife, and as the days grew colder and Talya’s mother Mira grew ill, there warmth was welcome relief. 

The only downside to working in the Branwells’ bakery was their son, Tybie. Nobody in town liked him. He was a skinny, rat-faced boy, of about Talya’s age, with beady eyes and a grin that often quirked up cruelly. Nobody knew how such a terrible child could come from such wonderful parents, but they tolerated Tybie because of his parents, who seemed to love him. Indeed, Tybie was always kind to his parents, and kind to others when they were around, but they weren’t always around. 

Isolde and Jan loved their son, but as Talya settled into her new job as Isolde’s assistant, it seemed to Tybie that they loved him less than they loved Talya. Isolde in particular doted on her new assistant, teaching her more about baking than she’d ever taught her son. So Tybie took it upon himself to hate Talya even more than he hated everyone who wasn’t his parents. He pulled her hair, tripped her as she left the shop in the evenings, replaced her sugar with salt whenever the Branwells made her tea, and dumped flour all over the clothes Isolde gave her. He pinched, poked, and prodded at her whenever his parents’ back were turned, and Talya didn’t dare fight back for fear out of losing the only source of income she and her mother. Mira was bedridden by then, and Talya couldn’t possibly move her somewhere else just so she could get another job. So she did her best to ignore Tybie and take his abuse in stride. 

Until one day. Isolde and Jan knew very little of Talya’s home life, only that she didn’t live in town, she was poor, and her mother was very sick. They didn’t pry, but still did their best to make Talya’s life easier. Isolde gave her her old dresses to wear at work. Jan brought her lunch and tea in the middle of the day and allowed her to come to come by the Branwell house to pick up breakfast. When Talya seemed particularly worried about her mother, Isolde allowed her to go home early without docking her pay for the day. They also sent her home with leftover bread and other baked goods, as well as fresh fruits and vegetables from the garden behind the bakery. 

On one particular evening Talya was getting ready to go home. The day had started out somewhat poorly. Mira had woken up coughing up blood, her eyes rolling into the back of her head. Her hand was thin and fragile, her skin faded and cold. It had been a bright scarlet color when Talya was young, but now it was a grayish light red. Her black eyes were dull, and she broke out in shivers and sweats as she kept coughing. But Mira told Talya to go to work anyway. 

“I’ll be fine,” she said. “Just bring me some water and I’ll be fine.”

And Talya did. She brought her water and gave her the leftover bread from the night Mylon’s whole body was trembling. “Are you going to kill me?” he asked.   
  
“That depends on you,” Talya told him. “I have three questions for you. I like to learn the names of the people I kill. I’ve learned yours, Mylon. So I’m going to ask you for three names. If you get them right, I’ll let you live. If you get them wrong, I’ll kill you. Does that seem fair?”before and then she went to work. Work was normal except for the cakes. They’d baked two cakes for the mayor’s husband, but he’d only needed one. So Isolde gave the other to Talya.

“Something sweet for your bitter days,” she said. 

The cake had three layers and was slathered in bright pink frosting and decorated with little red roses. It did read ‘Happy Birthday Mayor Brighton’, but it didn’t matter. Talya was thrilled by the prospect of bringing her mother a little joy. 

After sweeping the shop and locking the front door, Talya returned to the kitchen to grab the leftovers she was bringing to her mother and leave through the back. But when she entered the kitchen, she found Tybie there waiting for her. 

She thought he’d gone home with his parents. She should’ve known better.

He had the box with her cake in it in his hands, and he was sucking pink frosting off of his index finger. 

“Give me that,” Talya demanded. 

“Make me,” Tybie replied. 

“Give it back!” she repeated. “It’s for my mom.”

“And what does she need it for? It won’t make her die any slower.” 

Talya clenched her fist, digging her nails into her palm. But she didn’t say anything.

“What?” Tybie asked, flashing her his cruel grin. “Nothing to say?” He shrugged. “I don’t know what I expected. You’ve never had the guts to fight back. It’s disappointing.” Then he turned the box towards her and said, “Here. Take it.” 

Talya had to physically force herself not to run at it. Instead, she walked slowly and deliberately, but before she could reach the cake, the box slid from Tybie’s hands, turning upside down as it fell and splattering the cake onto the floor. 

In that split second, her rage growing at the corners of her brain, all she could think of was her mother, all alone and coughing up blood in the abandoned homestead they were squatting in half a mile from town, and how much her mother deserved that cake. Maybe in another moment Talya would have restrained herself, but here, in this moment, she didn’t.

She clocked Tybie across the face. He reeled back, landing against the kitchen counter. Almost instantly he was swinging back. Talya ducked, giving him a quick jab to the stomach before standing up and kicking him in the shins. Her movements were precise and controlled. This wasn’t her first fight. She’d fought men twice her size for scraps of food in alleyways before, and Tybie was nothing but a skinny little whelp. She managed to corner him quickly, forcing him to lash out even more recklessly. 

“You’re in here with me, you little rat boy,” she growled as she chased him into yet another corner of the kitchen.

He began to search frantically for a weapon, his hand eventually curling around a bottle of wine. He smashed it against the counter, sending the wine flying around and covering the kitchen walls. Unfortunately for Talya, this was one of the few hits he connected with. He swiped out at her with the jagged edges of the bottle, making contact with her face and creating a jagged, forking cut down it, from her forehead to her chin. Blood flooded from her wound, coloring her vision red and tainting the inside of her mouth with the taste of salt. It covered her white apron and dripped onto the wooden floor. She stumbled backwards, clutching at her face and howling in pain. She reached out, blindly scrambling for a weapon of her own and splattering blood all over the countertops, finally landing on a paring knife. 

As soon as she had it she lashed back out at Tybie, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt and burying the knife in his stomach, so deep that the handle slid under the skin. As soon as the knife was in, Talya let go of Tybie. He dropped to the floor with a dull thud. There was blood everywhere, and she wasn’t sure whose it was. Tybie was groaning and clutching his stomach, and Talya knew that he wouldn’t make it if he didn’t get help immediately. 

So she ran. She burst out of the back door of his house, blood trailing behind her. It had begun to rain, so the dust that made up the road out of town had become mud. It splattered over her boots and up her legs, and the rain mixed with the blood that ran down her face. She ran and ran, not daring to slow down until she’d reached the abandoned homestead where her mother waited. 

She burst through the empty doorframe, relieved to see her mother still lying there, tucked under the overcoat that had once belonged to Tammuz Basevi, her chest still rising and falling, albeit faintly. 

“Mama!” she cried, running to her mother’s side. 

Mira’s eyes fluttered open, then widened in horror as she took in her daughter’s visage. “Talya, what happened?” she asked, her voice a hoarse whisper. 

“Mama, I’m so sorry,” Talya said. She was trying her best not to cry. “We have to leave. I’ve done something terrible.”

Mira took her daughter’s hand. The blood blended in with her faded red skin. “No, Talya, you must leave.”

“I can’t just leave you here!”

“I’m  _ dying _ , Talya,” Mira said. “I can feel the Raven Queen at my back. I have a few hours at most.” 

“Mama, no.”

“We’ve known this was coming for weeks now.” Mira gave her a sad smile. “It was only a matter of time.” 

Talya leaned over and pressed her forehead to her mother’s. Mira didn’t seem to mind the blood. Talya was still doing her best not to cry. “I didn’t bring you food. I couldn’t. I’m sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for, my beautiful, brave girl. I love you so much, and I am so, so proud of you.”

“Don’t go, Mama. Please don’t go.”

“The last thing I want is to leave you here alone. But you are strong, you are so strong and resilient and powerful and you will do amazing things in the world. Remember, even after my final hours have passed, I will always be with you. Always.”

As the evening faded into night, and the homestead grew colder, Mira passed first into sleep, and then into oblivion. Talya held her hand the whole time, lying next to her and singing softly. The rain turned into a thunderstorm, fat raindrops sneaking through the rotted roof and pooling in the divots of the floorboards. When Mira finally passed, Talya took back her father’s coat and wrapped it around her shoulders, shivering in the cold and wet of the night. It was then when she finally allowed herself to cry, the tears mixing with the dried blood on her face. 

She sat like that for a few moments, shivering and crying, utterly alone for the first time in her life. And then she stood up.

She stormed out of the homestead and into the pounding rain, thunder and lightning cascading across the pitch black sky. Across from the homestead stood a statue of a nameless god. He was a tall, muscular man holding a wickedly pointed glaive, but his face had been hacked off, as had the symbol that decorated the pedestal. 

Talya gripped the pedestal and hoisted herself up. Then she began to climb. It was difficult for her feet to find purchase on the weathered and slipper stone, but she was strong. She grabbed his belt and monkey climbed up his hips, then she pulled herself up by his shoulders until she was kneeling on top of his faceless head. 

And then Talya stared into the darkened sky and the pouring rain and screamed, “ _ Won’t somebody help me?! _ ” She screamed it over and over until her throat was raw. She screamed it until she was out of breath and her lungs felt like they were going to collapse. Lightning flashed just above her head, followed by a rumble of thunder. 

And then the lightning struck. It was energy in its purest form, and Talya knew that she was dying at the same time that she had never felt more alive. The lightning coursed through her body, lighting up her veins and freezing her muscles in place. It was terribly painful and terrifyingly exhilarating. Her hair stood on end and her vision turned white. And just as it had come, it was gone, her vision fading from white to black as she descended into nothingness. 

Talya awoke on the muddy ground in the hours just before dawn. It had stopped raining, but the sky was still covered in clouds and thunder still rumbled in the distance. She rose to her hands and knees and touched her face. The rain had washed away most of the blood, so she made her way over to a puddle to check the damage Tybie’s bottle had done to her face. When she leaned over the puddle she almost fell back in shock, not because it was worse than she thought, but because it was  _ healed _ . The blood had been entirely washed away, leaving nothing but a pale blue, lightning-shaped scar across her face. 

**Author's Note:**

> If you didn’t read Zipporah’s story, “An Extant Form of Life”, Talya’s father’s name was Tammuz.


End file.
